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The aversion by education officials to the annual Fraser Institute’s Report Card on Ontario Elementary Schools continues unabated in 2016 as the now familiar boiler-plate responses – by public and Catholic boards alike – come forth.

Consider the official statement by the public board, which starts with an assurance the “Board remains open to any data or study that provides information leading to improvements in our schools,” only to then illustrate a profound misunderstanding of dictionary definitions of the words “open” and “any” by specifically dismissing Fraser’s data as offering “no evidence to show that ranking schools improves student learning.”

The Fraser report analyzes and compiles a ranking of most of Ontario’s 2,900 schools based on academic indicators derived from standardized testing conducted by the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO). It draws on the province’s own results in reading, writing, and mathematics skills testing – which the public board in its statement also calls “useful information on which to base strategies to improve our learning programs” – while also taking into account socio-economic considerations that could reasonably affect outcomes.

This results-oriented approach, however, poses a problem for boards, where institutionalized ideologies in favour of homogenizing achievement at the expense of individual merit appear entrenched. A prevailing attitude that “everyone’s-a-winner” – when, clearly, in schools as in life, everyone is not - requires boards to deny any lessons can be gleaned from potentially identifying best practices already extant within some of their own schools, based on high academic achievement. It’s a curious irony that people who educate others for a living in turn insist they have no new lessons to learn, but it does suit the system’s philosophy of broadly nurturing self-esteem for all as opposed to acknowledging individual achievement among some.

Interestingly, the ideas of officialdom towards the education of children do not appear to be universally embraced by parents. A new wrinkle in the boards’ traditional denunciations of the Fraser results as insufficient has emerged, with parents themselves citing the rankings as proof the public board’s ongoing Pupil Accommodation Review, which will result in the closure of area schools, is flawed.

For example, it has been asked why School X, which stands in the top third of Fraser’s academic rating, should close in favour of expanding School Y, which populates the bottom third of the list.

That’s a fair question, and an indicator of parents’ belief there is a benefit to categorizing performance in education, even if those providing the service apparently do not agree.